If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever

06-17-2012, 09:30 AM

Phoronix: Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has called out NVIDIA for their poor graphics drivers in a public presentation. In the talk he called NVIDIA "the single worst company we have ever dealt with" and ended his green comments with "NVIDIA: FUCK YOU!"..

I think Disney is the worst company for Linux. I know it sounds like a stretch, but their lobbiests have single-handedly had the maximum copyright duration extended from 28 years after the creation of the work to 70 years after the death of the author. Since then, there's been an increased incentive to not go open source because they can remain a monopolist for a hundred years or so.

Comment

I don't think this is the reason. The middle finger most probably points to NVidia's refusal to answer kernel developer questions about hardware internals.

Driver support is mostly excellent by NVidia, so it's highly unlikely that Linus is referring to that. It makes sense; he's a kernel dev and doesn't care about their binary driver. He only cares about in-kernel drivers, for which hardware internals are needed.

So Michael, where did you get the information that Linus is referring to "their poor graphics drivers"?

It's a good driver as far as openGL performance goes, but there are quite a few things it doesn't support in Linux, and they are so secretive about everything, even something as simple as what bit of firmware do I need to load to get the thing to light up.

Comment

As much as I'd like to see the nvidia driver blob opened up (and I really really do), I simply don't see it happening. Over the years the company has been buying out/incorporating smaller companies for their own closed code, and for all I know the driver may still have parts merely licensed for use. Java had similar issues, aye? They had to rewrite parts to be able to provide a functioning OpenJDK. Likewise Intel is stuck with those chipsets with integrated PowerVR graphics that they can't do anything about, since it's not their product.

Sadly it's not the linux team at the wheel, and the notion that opening your driver source is equavilent to "giving away your trade secrets" is still very dominant. I concede to some of the arguments there (eg. Carmack's 0x5f3759df), but I still think that the huge influx of developers/eyeballs would improve the driver performance and stability across the board, to an extent greatly overshadowing the hurt pride from "they took the tricks we used to stay ahead". I'd readily argue that you would get more for less.

That said, I'm far from being part of the kernel team, but as an end user I aim for Nvidia cards over their competitors' when I need discrete graphics. I very rarely have technical issues with the blob, and when I do I can't directly place the blame on that specific driver as I tend to run a fairly bleeding-edge software stack. Even if the backtrace shows the crash happening in nvidia_glx.so, I can't look closer to see whose fault it is.